First minister John Swinney today sidestepped successive attempts to pin him down on whether he will stick to the commitment to increase teacher numbers by 3,500 in the course of the 2021-26 parliamentary term.
Instead - in his first First Minister’s Questions (FMQs) since his appointment on Tuesday - he underlined that the financial realities facing national and local government were much changed since the 2021 Scottish Parliament election, which he largely blamed on rising inflation under the stewardship of the Westminster Conservative government.
In a clear indication that opposition parties will see Mr Swinney’s five years as education secretary as a weak spot that can be exploited, both the Conservatives and Labour made a rare decision to focus on education during Mr Swinney’s opening FMQs.
Conservative leader Douglas Ross started FMQs by highlighting yesterday’s protests by parents in Glasgow over plans to cut hundreds of teaching jobs, as first revealed by Tes Scotland in February.
Mr Ross tried four times for Mr Swinney to give a straight yes or no answer on whether he would keep the promise to increase teacher numbers across Scotland by 3,500.
Teacher numbers pledge made in ‘good faith’
Mr Swinney said such commitments were made in “good faith” and that he wanted to work with councils to realise them.
However, he also pointed to the “enormous financial pressure” on public spending - which he blamed on inflation and austerity measures imposed by the Westminster government - and contrasted this with the situations in two previous election years.
“The financial position is acutely challenging and difficult, and it’s different to the position that we faced in 2021 and back in 2016,” he said.
The FM also stressed that “I have to live in the real world of the public finances available to me” and said that the Conservatives “oppose every single tax change we have made to boost the public expenditure that’s available in Scotland”.
Tory and Labour home in on Swinney’s education record
Mr Swinney and Mr Ross also became locked in a tit-for-tat battle over the FM’s record as education secretary.
Mr Ross identified failures such as a scrapped education bill, the laptops-for-all policy, slow reform of Education Scotland and the Scottish Qualifications Authority, and Scotland’s results in the Programme for International Student Assessment.
In riposte, Mr Swinney pointed to the improving state of school buildings, rising teacher numbers during his time as education secretary, high numbers of school leavers in positive destinations, and literacy and numeracy data for primary pupils going in the right direction.
Labour leader Anas Sarwar, who very rarely mentioned education during FMQs when Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf served as first minister, also chose to attack Mr Swinney on this front.
He called on Mr Swinney to step in and save teaching jobs in Glasgow, and said that the FM was “trapped by the past” of his education record in government since the SNP was first elected in 2007.
Mr Swinney faced the questions on teacher numbers two days after a government-commissioned report - published on the day that he became first minister - advised ministers to think twice about rapidly increasing teacher numbers to hit the 2026 target for reducing weekly class contact time by 90 minutes.
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